In many three-dimensional (3D) volume visualization applications, such as computerized tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) scanning, it is common to embed graphical objects within a 3D volume rendering to provide display points, line graphics, or opaque object surfaces at their true 3D locations within the 3D volume rendering. The embedded graphical objects are often manipulated using a mouse or other user interface. It is challenging to meet the speed and performance requirements to manipulate the embedded graphical objects within a 3D volume because the 3D volume and the graphical objects are completely re-rendered in order to generate a composite image with the correct depth embedding. This challenge is common in many advanced visualization application systems and is particularly limiting when the visualization application is accessed from a remote client computer, adding data transfer latency between the application client and the application server.
Many existing remote visualization applications workaround this challenge by providing only a two-dimensional (2D) overlay visualization graphics over a 3D volume rendering. Providing the 2D overlays prevents the visualization from providing accurate depth perception. Another workaround renders lower resolution 3D embedded graphics in order to speed up performance of the visualization application, compromising the image quality of the graphics. Alternatively, high performance computing application systems and high speed networks may compensate for the latency, but the systems and networks are not cost effective and may not be available. Thus, these workarounds fail to provide a high quality 3D visualization in a cost effective manner.